


consolation prize

by essenceofheroism



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Speed Force, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 11:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13903209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/essenceofheroism/pseuds/essenceofheroism
Summary: Sometimes after Barry is gone, Joe gets into the habit of watching his daughter when he thinks she isn’t looking.





	consolation prize

Sometimes, Joe watches his daughter when he thinks she isn’t looking. The thing about Iris is that she’s resilient and strong and so crushingly _determined_ to not break, even when she staggers under the weight of the world, even as she crumbles under the losses of a lifetime, and even, Joe thinks disappointedly but proudly, in front of her father. Joe doesn’t understand how this happened. He doesn’t understand how a man (a _real, solid_ man) can vibrate at lightning speed, he doesn’t understand why said man killed Barry’s mother and he certainly doesn’t understand everything that has happened after. He knows that they’ve been over this multiple times, that Cisco and Caitlin have drawn multiple timelines with their white easy-erase markers and exposed him to the multiple universes that exist beyond theirs but it’s his personal secret that to this day, though he condones it, he doesn’t truly understand it at all.

It doesn’t embarrass him, it’s actually a sort of blessing, he thinks, that he’s foreign to the mysteries and tragedies of the Speed Force. It’s easier, like when you’re not a doctor and don’t understand the fragility of human physiology. You can just be sick, take your treatment without question and hope for the best. It’s a routine and on animal instinct, we follow and repeat. Follow and repeat. Until it stops working. Like when a hole that can only be described as the wrathful marriage of time and space, more often referred to as the Speed Force, swallows Barry whole.

When Joe watches Iris fidgeting with her wedding ring, watches the crumpled sheets on her futon crisply contrasting the tight, made duvet of her untouched bed, he realizes that the worst thing of all is uncertainty. Iris doesn’t know if she’s Barry’s bride-to-be or if widow-to-be is all she’s left with now. The face-down picture frames are a testatement to that. She hates that it feels like his death is finding a home in her bones and yet there is no closure or consolation. There is no time or cause of death. No mourners, no funerals. No gravestones, no reminders. There is nobody that she could have clutched to her chest and wept for until closure hit, there were no last words that she could have clung onto in attempted consolation. It hurts Joe in the worst, most inexplicable way the way that Iris hangs in a continuum similar to this Speed Force, this time-space singularity that freezes everything and everyone around her until loneliness encircles her like Barry no longer can.

He tells her once, “He’ll come back, baby girl.” Truth is, he doesn’t know that, doesn’t know much these days. but doesn’t it say somewhere in the _Dad Handbook 101_ that lying to your child is forgiven when backed with good cause?

A beat, then another and he doesn’t think she’ll speak at all. When he’s almost relieved that there’s no response, no objection, Iris’ voice is hoarse but undeniably steady as she responds, “We don’t know that,” and he knows she’s right.

They don’t know if Cisco’s speed-cannon-thing-a-majig will work, they don’t know if the Speed Force just swallowed him whole and is keeping him there, stagnant in time, _safe_ , or if he’s been consumed by the jaws of a metaphysics monster.

“Cisco keeps saying it, they all just keep _saying_ it as if it’s not a scientific _miracle_ if this thing works. They’re saying it as if it’s something they do all the time, like bringing people back from the dead is their past time hobby,” Iris says, throat dry and eyes just angry and on the verge of something greater than tears, like the slightest taste of possibility or yet — hope.

“I can’t bear for them to do this, I can’t wait for them to fail, Dad.”

And for the first time, she looks up at him in the past 45 minutes and makes eye contact. She’s determined now to protect her heart, he realizes. With Barry, Iris wore her love on her lips and her heart on her sleeve. With Barry, Iris was unguarded and infinite and carelessly, openly, _wholly_ in love. After Barry, something had chipped.

“Did you know that stomata, the openings at the bottom of leaves that allow for gas exchange and transpiration shut tight as soon as wind velocities accelerate?,” Barry had asked her once.

And she had said, fondly, “You’re a nerd, Barry Allen,” to which he’d responded, after punctuating her sentence with a kiss so soft it melted her, “and you love me all the more for it.” In agreement, Iris just kissed him deeper.

It’s something like that, turbulent velocities comparable to these turbulent tragedies that shut her heart so tight she isn’t sure if she’ll remember how to open it again. There was Eddie, whose life literally flashed before her eyes before he ended up glassy-eyed in her lap. At least, she muses sickly, he had an admirable death, a romantic end to his tragedy. In his story, there were lovers and there were funerals. Eddie died in the arms of the woman he loved, with lasting declarations of love and heroism and the shelter of his friends holding him close and away from the collecting arms of death.

Barry hadn’t been so lucky. She envies Eddie _for_ Barry, then scolds herself for doing just that. Eddie hadn’t died to be envied, he deserved better. There is a voice in her head that whispers angrily  _so did Barry so did Barry_ but she ignores it, instead.

Joe knows that most of the times, Cisco understands Iris. Caitlin is not bad herself. Now, it’s like they’re all on a different dimension, a different wavelength of understanding altogether. It’s Iris and then them, Iris against the world. (It used to be Iris and Barry against the world, but Joe thinks she’s trying to forget that.) He understands that they trade hands in scientific secrets, play their experimental games of cause and effect but there is more than science at stake here, it is a _possibility_ at large. It’s his baby girl’s heart in a chokehold.

“You need some rest, Iris,” Joe gently suggests. Her dad doesn’t order her to do much anymore. She’s assumed the mantle of team leader recently and though she thinks there is another reason for this gracious distance, she uses this excuse instead.

She’s almost done her article, her eyes are sore and tomorrow is another day, another day of fighting crime, leading a team and staying strong, feet running. Her apartment offers a special solitude, a resting place that’s colder without him and his Speed-warmth, and feels larger without his twenty-five grey sweatpants everywhere but nonetheless, it's their home and she’s grateful for the pit-stop recharge it offers her at the end of a long day. Joe watches as Iris shuts down her computer, stares a little at the ring on her hand, an emblem, a reminder, and almost smiles. He thinks it’s a mantra, _keep running keep running keep running,_ that makes her stronger, that makes her bolder and at the end, the world is gifted another day with Iris West.

Iris doesn’t agree with Cisco and Caitlin, she doesn’t want to play her cards to have her heart broken again but she would be lying if she told you that the possibility didn’t leave a hopeful aftertaste on her tongue. So she gets up, she looks at her dad and she tells him she loves him because as she’s learned after a certain, stormy night, she hasn’t nearly said those words enough.

* * *

When Barry does come back, it’s a miracle, it’s a scientific marvel. Maybe it’s both - it doesn’t matter because he’s _here_. It’s everything that could have crushed her beyond repair and yet she’s wrapped up in his arms and in the cool, rainy night, gratefulness warms her veins.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always looking forward to comments so feel free to leave one! Also find me on tumblr if you'd like at ohliverfelicity.tumblr.com.


End file.
